Weekend press round-up: Britain’s electricity ‘to have first gas-free hours by 2025’

In our latest review of sector coverage across the national newspapers, National Grid ESO discusses plans for a carbon-free network. Meanwhile, the government is to ask water companies to open up access to pipes and sewers to aid the rollout of gigabit internet; new research questions the green credentials of biomass and there are further calls for the prime minister to stimulate a green recovery.

Britain’s electricity ‘to have first gas-free hours by 2025’

Britain’s electricity network is on track to run for hours at a time without burning any natural gas by the middle of the decade, according to National Grid.

Energy bosses are eyeing the next step in cleaner energy after Britain last week went a record two months without burning any coal to generate electricity. National Grid Electricity Systems Operator, which runs the main networks, wants to be able to run a “carbon-free” network by 2025.

A spokesman said: “Meeting this goal means operating the system without any gas generation running for short periods in 2025.” That is likely to be hours at a time rather than days.

Natural gas, drilled from underground including the North Sea, generated almost 40pc of the UK’s electricity last year, although the fossil fuel’s role is falling as more wind and solar power stations are hooked up to the grid.

Gas-fired power stations emit far less carbon dioxide than coal and are a stable source of power. They are likely to be used for the foreseeable future, particularly given the development of technology that can capture carbon emissions and store them underground so they don’t pollute the atmosphere.

Large scale carbon capture and storage systems are some way off in the UK, however, although the Government committed in its latest Budget to spending £800m on getting some up and running.

Running the grid without natural gas, even for a few hours at a time, would be an important symbolic and practical step towards the UK’s commitment to cut carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.

It would also represent a further challenge to the oil and gas giants such as Shell and BP, who have pivoted their businesses towards gas in recent years due to its role in generating electricity. Demand for electricity is expected to spike given the growth in electric cars and possibly electric heating.

The two-month run without using domestic coal-fired power was achieved in part due to the slump in demand for energy while people are staying at home due to the lockdown.

The milestone was reached at midnight on June 10, aided by high winds and the sunniest spring on record. National Grid ESO said it was hard to say when Britain might go a whole day without using any natural gas that wasn’t coupled with carbon capture.

Daily Telegraph

Greater access to water and sewer networks needed for gigabit rollout

Broadband firms could be given access to more than 600,000 miles of underground sewage and water networks in a bid to speed up the roll out of gigabit internet.

If introduced, government plans would force utility firms to open their infrastructure such as pipes and sewers for new superfast internet cables.

The idea is that broadband operators would be able to carry their equipment through ‘passive infrastructure’ owned by other operators and services.

Plans to make it easier to rollout broadband includes opening up ducts, pipes and tunnels owned and operated by electricity, gas, water and sewage firms.

About 80 per cent of the price of rolling out new broadband lines comes from laying new ducts and poles, so using existing infrastructure will reduce the cost.

It isn’t just utility companies, government plans could see existing telecom infrastructure, owned by Openreach and others, further opened up to competition.

This would include utility ducts, poles, masts, pipes, inspection chambers, manholes, cabinets, and antenna installations made more accessible.

Openreach says it already provides access to the ducts and poles in its network for other operators to use and share and have been since 2011.

This move could see that agreement expanded and other operators asked to make their own infrastructure available to share.

The move could improve telecom companies ability to make use of new and existing infrastructure lining the road and rail networks, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) said.

It is hoped changes could save time and money in rolling out gigabit-capable broadband, as works such as installing new ducts and poles can make up to 80 per cent of the costs.

Currently full fibre broadband is available to about 12 per cent of the UK – 3.5 million premises, according to Ofcom.

‘We are keen to explore how we can further reduce deployment costs and barriers, including by improving access to the UK’s passive infrastructure such as the networks of ducts, cabinets, poles and masts that deliver our utilities services across the country,’ said Matt Warman, Minister for Digital Infrastructure.

‘Sharing the existing infrastructure of other telecoms and utilities has the potential to increase the speed and lower the cost of improving both fixed and mobile networks dramatically,’ he said.

‘It makes both economic and common sense for firms rolling out gigabit broadband to make use of the infrastructure that already exists across the country.’

He said the move would help firms avoid high costs and disruption that comes from having to dig or build new infrastructure.

‘We’ve seen progress with improved access to Openreach’s ducts and poles, but other telecoms companies have large networks that are not easily accessible.

‘We want them, and utility companies, to do more to open these up and help speed up getting next-generation broadband to people across the UK,’ Warman said.

Daily Mail

Dirty secret of subsidised wood-fired power stations

The government has committed £13 billion to support wood-burning power stations but a study has found that it is relying on an outdated assumption that they help to combat climate change.

Biomass power plants, which burn wood, receive direct subsidies of more than £1 billion a year, according to an analysis published today by Ember, a climate-change think tank. Next year the three large plants operating in Britain will also benefit from an annual carbon tax break forecast at about £333 million.

Supporters say that the wood pellets burnt by the plants, mostly imported from the United States, are carbon-neutral because trees are replanted.

Wood-burning stations initially release more CO2 from their stacks, per unit of electricity, than the coal equivalents. The growth of new forest should eventually absorb as much carbon as was emitted. However, today’s report says that this process can take centuries, too long to prevent climate change over the coming decades. “The periods during which atmospheric CO2 levels are raised before forest regrowth can reabsorb the excess emissions are incompatible with the urgency of reducing emissions to comply with the objectives enshrined in the Paris Agreement,” the authors write.

Subsidies and tax breaks for biomass push up energy bills and taxes, without a clear benefit for the climate, they argue. They say that a planned post-Brexit carbon emissions tax should include biomass carbon.

The country’s two large biomass power plants were converted from coal: Drax in North Yorkshire, owned by Drax Group, and Lynemouth in Northumberland, owned by the Czech company EPH. There are plans for one more biomass plant to go into operation this year, MGT Teesside.

Last year biomass accounted for about 11 per of British electricity.

Environmentalists now say that wind and solar are cheaper and cleaner. Last year the price guaranteed by the government for offshore wind was £44 per megawatt-hour while Drax’s price was £116.50, the Ember report says.

It calculates that Drax has already received almost £4 billion in government support. “With the contracts existing until 2027 we estimate Drax will receive a total of £10 billion in subsidy at 2019 prices,” it adds.

Drax and Lynemouth have government contracts to subsidise their operation until March 2027, after which the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has indicated it will cease support for plants converted to run on wood that do not have mechanisms for carbon to be removed from the atmosphere. Plants purpose-built for biomass would still qualify.

Gas and coal power plants pay for the CO2 they emit, via the EU Emissions Trading System and the UK’s Carbon Price Support.

Power plants that burn wood are exempt from both schemes.

A Drax spokeswoman said: “The emissions from biomass power generation should not be taxed because under UN global carbon accounting rules, woody biomass emissions are already accounted for in the agriculture, forestry and other land use sector. Any change would mean that emissions were being counted twice.”

The Times

Rolls-Royce triggers £250bn nuclear race

A consortium of British businesses led by manufacturing giant Rolls-Royce has submitted proposals to Ministers to accelerate the building of a new fleet of mini nuclear reactors in the North of England.

The plans, circulated in Whitehall ‘in the last few weeks’, could see construction of high-tech factories to build the small reactors begin by next year.

The consortium – which includes UK construction and engineering firms Laing O’Rourke, Atkins and BAM Nuttall – would use British intellectual property to build the reactors. It would work with partners from the US, Canada and France.

It has been estimated that exporting small nuclear reactor technology could be worth £250billion to the UK if the programme is successful.

Sources told The Mail on Sunday that the plan is ‘starting to resonate’ in parts of Government because it could boost the economy as the country recovers from the destruction wrought by the pandemic.

Figures last week showed the economy contracted by 20.4 per cent in April and job losses in the travel, hospitality and retail sectors are mounting.

Sixteen Rolls-Royce-backed reactors, each able to power a city the size of Leeds, could be built by 2050. The project would employ 40,000 people.

Hundreds of related jobs would be created this year if the Government gives the green light.

The plan to deliver British-made nuclear reactors would help the Government to meet the UK’s commitment to shift to clean energy by 2050.

It would also appeal to Tory MPs keen to reduce Britain’s reliance on China. Chinese firms are currently appointed to build large nuclear reactors in Britain at locations including Sizewell in Suffolk and Bradwell in Essex.

However, there are growing concerns among senior Tories about Chinese influence over critical infrastructure in the UK. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has indicated his intention to distance the UK from China economically, amid talk of phasing out Huawei’s involvement in Britain’s new 5G mobile internet network.

Mail on Sunday

UK government issues urgent call for ‘shovel-ready’ projects

The UK government has issued an urgent call for “shovel-ready” projects to help the economy recover from the severe damage wreaked by the coronavirus lockdown.

In the first glimpse into its economic stimulus plans, the government has asked elected mayors and local business leaders in England for ideas that would create jobs and be finished within 18 months.

The Financial Times has seen the letter sent on June 10 by Robert Jenrick, housing secretary, to mayors and the 38 local enterprise partnerships (LEPs), who are responsible for economic growth. Proposals are requested by June 18, underlining the urgency of the economic crisis.

As well as schemes previously pitched for government funds, “we are willing to consider exceptional, additional shovel-ready capital projects that can be delivered within 18 months”, the letter said.

“Where considering new projects, these must deliver on two overarching objectives — driving up economic growth and jobs and supporting green recovery.”

Suggestions include modernising town centres; road, rail and cycling infrastructure; broadband improvements; research and development centres; and skills training programmes.

The Financial Times

As a dividend freeze sweeps the FTSE, will National Grid power up investors?

Spare the briefest of thoughts for Britain’s capital-owning classes. FTSE 100 companies are forecast to pay out £9.5bn less in dividends to shareholders for the 2019 trading year, according to investing platform AJ Bell, as the coronavirus crisis ravages their income. That’s 11% less money going to shareholders’ pockets compared with the previous year.

Some 48 FTSE 100 firms have announced some kind of reduction to, or suspension of, payments to shareholders, compared with 47 that have kept or increased them since the start of the year, AJ Bell says. Worse is expected, with National Grid’s delayed annual results statement on Thursday the latest date circled in red pen on the calendars of nervous investors.

Before the crisis, National Grid, the owner of the UK’s high-voltage electricity network, was trundling along, as utilities are wont to do (apart from British Gas owner Centrica). Profits of £2.47bn are expected for the year to 31 March, but that only includes eight days of the UK’s lockdown.

Beyond that, any detail on what to expect has essentially been limited to the investor equivalent of “here be dragons”. Financial performance was in line with previous guidance, according to the company’s last update in early April, with the glaring caveat that this was “before any Covid-19 impacts”. That leaves a lot of room for manoeuvre, and falling energy use during the crisis suggests National Grid’s customers, electricity generators, will have less to spend.

Given what is going on in health systems around the rest of the world, there are not violins small enough to mourn the losses of shareholders who miss out on a chunky cheque while they sit at home. But the dividend freeze taking over the FTSE 100 has broader implications.

Simply put, what is bad news for infrastructure providers such as National Grid is also bad news for those who rely on their technology – which in the case of the electricity grid includes everyone in Britain save the odd apocalypse prepper. One would hope that it would cut short-term returns to shareholders before its £5bn annual investment needs are hit; but any historian of capitalism this side of the millennium would urge you not to take that for granted.

National Grid is one the companies most central to the UK’s net-zero ambitions. The UK’s energy network is changing shape, with coal and nuclear stations closing and vast wind and solar generation coming online. At the same time, the advent of battery electric vehicles – which could be the only option for car buyers by 2035 or earlier – means demands for electricity will be far greater.

A major irony of this squeeze is that the pandemic has given a glimpse – albeit at an intolerably high cost – of another world: one with less traffic, cleaner air, and radically lower carbon emissions. The concurrence of drastically lower energy usage and the sunniest and driest British spring since at least 1929 means the UK was, at the time of going to print, still setting a new record for the UK’s longest period of coal-free electricity generation since 1882, when a power station in Holborn, London, first fired up.

Yet the ominous signs for the future are already there. “We are starting to see some delays and disruption to our capital programme,” National Grid said in its April update. If the investment freeze caused by the pandemic worsens, it won’t just be shareholders who pay the price.

The Guardian

Leading UK charities urge PM to demand a green Covid-19 recovery

The chiefs of some of Britain’s leading charities have written to the prime minister to demand a “green recovery” from the coronavirus crisis, urging him to use economic rescue packages to build low-carbon infrastructure and spur the creation of long-term green jobs.

The group of 57 charities representing 22 million members called for any bailouts to be subject to strict conditions so that companies receiving state help in the Covid-19 crisis would have to meet low-carbon targets, and for all elements of any economic recovery package to be subject to a test to ensure they were in line with the UK’s target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050.

They also want ministers to cancel, rather than suspend, the debts of developing countries struggling with the impact of Covid-19 and the climate crisis.

Charities including the Women’s Institute, the National Trust, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), Oxfam and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) signed the letter, which comes after weeks in which ministers have made references to the need for a sustainable recovery, but without providing policy details.

“We know a green recovery makes economic sense, and is supported here in the UK and overseas by leading businesses, academics, ministers and health representatives,” said Tanya Steele, the chief executive of WWF UK, one of the organisers of the letter. “What we urgently need to see now, and post-pandemic, is commitments from government on turning this into action.”

The campaigners said investing in a green recovery could support at least 210,000 green jobs and bring benefits of £90bn a year, from economic rejuvenation and better health.

The charities include poverty campaigners and faith groups, as well as green pressure groups. Melissa Green, the general secretary of the Women’s Institute (WI), said: “WI members are clear that post-Covid-19 economic packages need to incorporate robust and ambitious green policies in order to get on track for net zero emissions by 2050 or sooner.”

The charities join an increasing number of economists, health professionals, leading climate experts, developing countries and the government’s own statutory advisers, who are all calling for a green recovery to lift countries out of recession and on to a low-carbon pathway.

The Guardian

British Gas wins court ruling to halt blogger’s ‘defamatory claims’

Lawyers for British Gas have secured a court order preventing a blogger from writing posts which claim the company is engaged in “unlawful” business practices.

At the Court of Session in Edinburgh the company secured an interim interdict against Derek McPherson, a guest house operator from Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. It believes that Mr McPherson’s blog which is called “British Gas: a Lawless Private Company?” contained incorrect information which was damaging to its business.

A judgment issued yesterday said that Mr McPherson wrote a blog on May 2 which contained damaging claims. In the blog Mr McPherson claimed that agents for British Gas covered up “unlawful business practices”, and “provided blatantly false and dishonest information in clear violation of anti-fraud legislation throughout the UK”. He also claimed that a lawyer working for British Gas was corrupt. The blog was the first in a series of 12.

The judgment states that the blog contained claims that British Gas is engaged in “massive fraud” and is ignoring its obligations under Schedule 5 of the 1995 Gas Act. On May 13 , Lady Poole agreed with submissions made by British Gas and granted the interim interdict preventing Mr McPherson making incorrect claims about the business. In the judgment, published yesterday, Lady Poole explained: “In my opinion, this language, with which the existing blog is peppered, bears a defamatory meaning when objectively read. I do not accept that the defender has shown that the statements set out above made by him are true.

“Nor do I accept that what is written in the blog could amount to fair comment. There is no evidence before me of convictions in any court for fraud, theft, conspiracy or any offence of dishonesty on the part of the pursuers, in respect of the matters raised by the defender.

“Having balanced the various relevant considerations, I am of the opinion that the balance of convenience is firmly in favour of grant of interim interdict.”

Lady Poole also wrote that this did not stop Mr McPherson from continuing to write on his blog. He was just unable to write anything which was defamatory.

The blog is still operational.

The Times

Brewers’ hops to clean brown-soup River Spree

About a hundred miles upriver from Berlin, the River Spree frequently becomes a lurid brown soup so thick that fish cannot swim in it.

The waters acquire their burnt umber hue from the iron compounds running off the open-cast coalmines of the Lausitz in episodes known as Verockerungen, or brownings.

The contamination of the Spreewald region can be so strong that some areas have been called ecological dead zones and utility companies are hard pressed to provide some towns with clean drinking water. Even Berlin’s supplies contain high levels of pollutants.

Scientists hope to prevent the brownings with waste from breweries, which would otherwise be thrown away or fed to farm animals. Their mission, as one local newspaper put it, is to “save the Spreewald with beer”.

“The breweries are looking for a lucrative way to make something of their spent grains, their yeast and other brewing by-products,” Simona Schwarz, of the Leibniz Institute for Polymer Research, told the Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten. “We believe we can use them to filter out iron particles and other heavy metals from the water.”

The brownings have become worse over the past three decades since the collapse of the former East Germany, which operated the brown coal mines around the Spree’s headwaters. As the pumps that had kept the mines dry fell into disuse, more and more contaminants seeped into the groundwater.

Barriers have been erected on the upper Spree to try to sift out the pollutants. More exotic techniques, including sulphate-eating bacteria and wells that divert the groundwater, are also being looked into.

Dr Schwarz’s project combines brewery waste with chitosan, a chemical from the shells of crustaceans. Chitosan, the yeast and spent grains are intended to act as a filter by grabbing the iron particles out of the water. The experiment is being funded by the federal economics ministry and involves 17 companies, including the Bavarian state brewery at Weihenstephan.

The Times

Utility Week’s weekend press round-up is a curation of articles in the national newspapers relating to the energy and water sector. The views expressed are not those of Utility Week or Faversham House.